the Bach Flower Remedy:
Cherry Plum

Cherry Plum: Remedy from the set of the Second Nineteen

About this music

This has been performed in a version for sax, piano bass and drums on several occasions. It has also been performed as a piano solo piece.

An extended through-composed piece in the key of E flat, but with complex harmonies and modulations. The piece eventually settles on a lyrical melody with long notes which gradually fades using the highest register of the saxophone and finishes on an ambiguous major seventh/sharp eleventh chord.

Lyrics for Cherry Plum

Cherry plum is an instrumental piece.

About Cherry Plum, the Bach Flower Remedy

The first of the second nineteen Remedies. Came from the feeling that Bach had in relation to the pain he had – a fear that he might lose control and be driven out of his mind. A reactive mental strain : the feeling that he was losing ground in some battle for the mind.

‘Fear of the mind being over-strained, of reason giving way, of doing fearful and dreaded things, not wished and known wrong, yet there comes the thought and impulse to do them.’

Not a great madness but a small personal battle for sanity and control. Cherry Plum drives away all the wrong ideas and gives the sufferer mental strength and confidence

Very much a remedy of light and dark and if we look at the tree in flower in early spring this is what we see: the intense white blossoms clustered on the black branches, with only the bright beginnings of green leaf buds. Cherry Plum is the first white blossom of the year. A slender small tree with slightly drooping branches, weak in appearance. The strength of the gesture is found in the brilliant and exuberant flowering, not in the structure of the trunk and branches. The scent is strong and heady and reinforces this experience. It shines into the darer recesses of the mind, clearing and ordering mental confusion.

A somewhat unstable species. ‘In nature the cherry plum varies greatly; in those districts in which it is believed to be centred, it is said to be difficult to find two trees showing quite the same combination of characteristics.’

This parallels the instability of the emotional state. With the Cherry Plum state there is a pressure from the non-physical world that distorts normal boundaries, breaking through the controls which would otherwise bring certainty in the process of life.

The plant has a natural tendency to sucker, sending up new stems from the root. This shows the other aspect: the need to stabilize the mentality by involvement in the practical material world where roots draw strength from the earth. The white light of the flowers draws down the mental clarity, but the future for the plant lies in the root’s regeneration within the earth.

The action of these remedies is to raise our vibrations and open up our channels for the reception of our Spiritual Self to flood our natures with the particular virtue we need. They cure, not by attacking disease, but by flooding our bodies with the beautiful vibrations of our Higher Nature, in the presence of which disease melts as snow in the sunshine.

Cherry Plum is like sunshine and snow, like the bright light of the Alps. There are always a few days of brilliant sunshine towards the end of February which herald the coming Spring. This is the quality of light that shines in the blossom of the Cherry Plum.

This account of this Bach Flower Remedy is based on the book Bach Flower Remedies : Form and Function by Julian Barnard.

For full information see HealingHerbs.co.uk→.

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